High-definition (HD) media was originally developed in 1998, three years after DVDs became commercially available. Despite the DVD having six times the storage space of CDs, it was not sufficient to store all the information in the new HD media. New formats were needed and, eventually, in April 2003, the first Blu-ray disk and HD DVD-compatible devices went on sale. Blu-ray and HD DVD store exactly six times more information than a DVD. Members of the general public, disgruntled at having to watch poor-quality images on old-fashioned DVD players, now require these HD storage devices to watch movies on their new big-screen televisions.
There was a gap of several years between the development of HD media in 1998 and that of the HD DVD storage device in 2003. Although it was well known that lasers with shorter wavelengths could solve the problem, it was not until Dr. Shuji Nakamura (b. 1954), a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, invented blue laser diodes that Blu-ray and HD DVD became a reality. Nakumura had already invented blue, green, and white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in the 1990s. The name Blu-ray originates from the blue laser used to read and write the disk.
DVDs were introduced as a standard format, the manufacturers having learned painful lessons from the costly war between the VHS and Betamax formats. When it came to the HD format, however, the manufacturers decided to ignore this precedent. Sony's Blu-ray Disc and Toshiba's HD DVD began to compete for dominance in the market. The clash of technological titans was won by Sony, with Toshiba announcing on February 19, 2008, that it was ceasing production of the HD DVD format. By that time, close to 1 million HD DVD players had been sold.
